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Beginning eight nights after the August full moon and for several successive nights, the massive coral reef of the Flower Garden Banks sanctuary, in the Gulf of Mexico, puts on one of nature’s most dazzling displays. As if on cue, spawning corals release clouds of gametes and torrents of what look like pink champagne bubbles and tiny incandescent globes into the clear, warm water.
The reef’s 23 species of coral thrive on twin salt domes that rise from the ocean floor about 110 miles (177 kilometers) due south of the Texas-Louisiana border. Joining them in this sunlit undersea “garden” and diver’s mecca are over 250 multihued species of reef invertebrates and more than 175 species of fish, including manta rays and whale sharks. The fantastical underwater terrain also encompasses ancient drowned coral reefs, natural gas seeps, a salt lake that is fed by a brine seep, and the eerie moonscape formed by the eroded bedrock surface of nearby Stetson Bank, which was incorporated into the sanctuary in 1996.
For more information,
check out NOAA’s Flower Garden Banks profile:
http://www.sanctuaries.nos.noaa.gov/oms/
omsflower/omsflower.html
Address
Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary
216 W. 26th Street
Suite 104
Bryan, TX 77803
Communication
Tel: +1 409 779 2705
Fax: +1 409 779 2334
E-mail: flowergardens@nms.noaa.gov
Sanctuary Web site: http://www.flowergarden.nos.noaa.gov/